Adventure Gamers - Forums

Primarily, I tend to use Steam for all PC games, and as such have bought many PC games through it. I know that GOG is supposed to be another good retailer of digital games, but, while I prefer Steam to physical discs for availability, I would probably rather get physical discs than use GOG for games that aren’t on Steam. 
So, I was wondering, what major games are available through CD ROMs but not Steam? 
So far, major games I have physically that aren’t on Steam are: 
-Escape From Monkey Island
-The Feeble Files
-Sam & Max Hit the Road
And some less major games, I also have the original versions of Grim Fandango and the first 4 broken sword games.
The biggest adventure game I want to get that isn’t on Steam is probably Discworld Noir.
What other major games would need to be bought physically outside of Steam?

I mean, this is all going to depend on what you mean by “major”, isn’t it?

Since you listed Feeble Files which is still a fairly obscure adventure game, I would add
-Black Dahlia
-Dark Side of the Moon
-Bureau 13
-Azrael’s Tear
-Companions of Xanth
-Dust: A Tale of the Wired West
-The Orion Conspiracy

Luhr28 - 22 August 2018 10:14 AM

I mean, this is all going to depend on what you mean by “major”, isn’t it?

Since you listed Feeble Files which is still a fairly obscure adventure game…

Ah, I guess I thought of Feeble Files as being more well known than it was. I got it a few years ago having not heard of it before, but since then I’ve heard it referred to quite a few times, I guess it just stood out to me more than some other games since I knew of the game in a way.
The way I was thinking of games being “major” was really just how well known and popular they are, which I guess is quite vague.
I don’t know if I’ve heard of some of those before, though some of the names do look familiar, so I’ll remember these for the future

TimovieMan - 22 August 2018 10:29 AM

Little bit off-topic here but why exactly would you prefer hunting down physical discs over using GOG? I ask because your use of “probably” suggests you just don’t have any experience with GOG.
Personally, I use Steam for all the games I don’t find on GOG instead of the other way around…

I really like having physical copies of games, just because they look nice and can be displayed together and stuff, though the downside to them is having to physically get up to retrieve them and put them in the disc drive to use, what a lot of work. /s
I think Steam is nice for having all the games together in a nice integrated platform, and while it’s not the same as having physical copies, the easy accessibility and interconnectedness of it all probably more than makes up for that.
I haven’t actually used GOG before (outside of the nice free games on it which I haven’t actually played yet), but the lack of physical property to it, as well as how the games aren’t connected to the Steam account that I have already invested a lot into, just puts me off of making much serious use of it.
Though I can, of course, see that it would be likable to others.

If we define major as being part of the Top 100 All-Time Adventure Games, these are the PC games you currently cannot find through digital distribution:

21: Blade Runner (1997)
22: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel (1992)
27: Discworld Noir (1999)
35: The Neverhood (1996)
43: John Saul’s Blackstone Chronicles (1998)
50: 29/35 of Infocom text adventures (1982-1989)
56: In Memoriam (2003)
62: Obsidian (1996)
63: Black Dahlia (1998)
66: Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon (1997)
67: Pepper’s Adventures in Time (1993)
68: Shadow of Destiny (2001)
70: Amber: Journeys Beyond (1996)
73: Discworld II: Missing Presumed…!? (1996)
85: The Dark Eye (1995)
94: Seven Games of the Soul (2000)
95: Ripley’s Believe It or Not! (1995)
98: The Space Bar (1997)

I do understand the appeal of having the game in physical format but prefer GOG.com over both DRM-ridden discs and Steam.

Jabod - 22 August 2018 10:43 AM

I definitely echo what Tim says above. Rather strange if you ask me (as I’ve got over 100 on GoG but only 3 on Steam )

I guess I just started buying games on Steam since I heard of it first, then got too attached to my Steam collection to really consider adding to a GOG collection being quite the same.

And nice, outside of Blade Runner, I guess most of the really major adventure games are still available digitally then, AFAIK none of those other games listed are frequently referred to ones (though I may be mistaken).

Jabod - 22 August 2018 11:58 AM

Apparently you can now link a GoG collection with your Steam account (others can no doubt tell you more as I’ve not done it) so you don’t really have a problem there.

And, as far as the listed games go, you’ll find that most of them are frequently referred to, as and when need arises. Just because they are not blasted all over the interweb thingy doesn’t mean that they are poor games. They pretty much all made the Top 100 here after all.
Because of that comment I’m wondering how much time you’ve spent around Adventure Game players and associated websites. After all, you’re not likely to find many AGs being talked about by people dedicated to First Person Shooters for example

Oh, nice, didn’t know about linking GOG with Steam. I suppose it is possible to just add shortcuts to games to Steam, but it just doesn’t feel as nice as having easy access to all the pages that Steam has.
Also, yeah, I haven’t really spent that much time with a serious interest in adventure games, and since then I also have, due to using Steam more, had an interest in adventure games heavily biased towards recent releases. I also personally don’t really like systems with too many verbs or too many game over opportunities, and furthermore just am not all that good at solving adventure game puzzles, so I suppose I haven’t really taken so much interest in games released in the times when they were typically harder. I have read through quite a few forums here in the past, but the ones I looked at would really only be ones that I know about, so I guess that is also why I would (falsely) have considered games not mentioned in such threads to be lesser known.
But, at the very least, it doesn’t seem like there are many likely “Best Adventure Game Of All Time” tier games unavailable for digital download.

Also, I feel like for now at least, while I still haven’t finished games like Grim Fandango and other extremely popular games, I might as well play some of the best games before moving onto the (still good) games that aren’t as highly celebrated.

Personally I have a directory of Gog games.  I just open that and go to the game I want to play.  Really a lot simpler than Steam, with no downsides from my perspective.

Jabod - 22 August 2018 11:58 AM

ElitelyIQed - 22 August 2018 10:59 AM

I guess I just started buying games on Steam since I heard of it first, then got too attached to my Steam collection to really consider adding to a GOG collection being quite the same.

And nice, outside of Blade Runner, I guess most of the really major adventure games are still available digitally then, AFAIK none of those other games listed are frequently referred to ones (though I may be mistaken).

Apparently you can now link a GoG collection with your Steam account (others can no doubt tell you more as I’ve not done it) so you don’t really have a problem there.

You can do that through GOG Connect:

http://www.gog.com/connect

However, that doesn’t mean much. GOG Connect only allows you to reclaim some selected games once or twice a year, most often during some big sales as part of their promotion. If you don’t own any of the games that are selected then, connecting accounts won’t accomplish much.

As to the OP: you do realise that Steam is the worst of your options? With GOG, your games are DRM-free and you can do whatever you want with them. With physical copies, as long as you have working drives to read them, you should be fine. With Steam, they can add whatever forms of DRM and run forced updates that will render the games unusable, also if the service ever goes down you lose all access to everything you have paid for.
I repeat: Steam is the last choice for any collector, it’s more like a game rental store.

Now as for those games you asked for, here’s a hidden gem for you: Alien Incident!
A great, much underrated game that may be hard to find these days. It has never been released in any downloadable form.

Also, Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity. It’s greatness depends on how much you love Star Trek though… If you like the series, you most likely will like the game too. For non-fans, I don’t know how moving the game experience will be.

Steam is not the worst option. Have you tried to get a refund with GOG? It’s a nightmare process. With steam it is a simple one-click process with no questions asked.

Luhr28 - 23 August 2018 04:09 AM

Steam is not the worst option. Have you tried to get a refund with GOG?

I never needed to.
With almost 1000 games on my GOG account, I haven’t encountered any problems yet.

As far as contacting the support for issues like a mistake in billing, they responded and fixed the issue within a couple of hours.

For comparison: I have maybe over 500 games on Steam (I have never bought anything from them, these are freebies, Kickstarter reward backups, and copies from bundles etc.), and I have tried to move three of them from one computer (with Steam) to another (without Steam), and only one of them worked. With a random sampling of only three games, you have 66% chances of not being able to freely play the game.

It is really a shop from hell.

I’m not surprised it didn’t work, since Steam has always needed to be installed in order to run a game. Why is that a problem?

Anyway you got the games for free so no big deal. For me it’s not about problems running the game but if I don’t like the game. GOG won’t let me refund in that case. Steam will.

Luhr28 - 23 August 2018 04:33 AM

I’m not surprised it didn’t work, since Steam has always needed to be installed in order to run a game. Why is that a problem?

They limit my rights to use the game, and that’s a big problem. Maybe that’s OK for you, but for many of us, it isn’t. GOG has absolutely no restrictions.

I am always surprised when people don’t see anything wrong with sentences like “Steam has always needed to be installed in order to run a game”.

But, for the record, there are cases when even Steam games do actually run when the files are transferred from one computer to another.

http://steam.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

So there’s no absolute NEED for them to do that, they just WANT to do that for some reason. And any store that is mistreating their customers with unnecessary restrictions is not going to get my money.

Luhr28 - 23 August 2018 04:33 AM

Anyway you got the games for free so no big deal. For me it’s not about problems running the game but if I don’t like the game. GOG won’t let me refund in that case. Steam will.

Not entirely true.

You can get an automatic refund from Steam if you have played less than two hours which they have set as their limit.

Now, think about that for a second. How do they know that you have played two hours or less? It’s because they TRACK what you do! Not only do they impose restrictions on their customers, but they also track what their customers are doing.

With GOG, you can use manual downloads that don’t use Galaxy, and no one is limiting or tracking you in any way.

“I don’t like the game” has never been a proper policy for refunds, not even back when you bought games on physical discs. Just because Steam let’s you have the illusion of customer freedom like that, it’s based on customer restrictions.
And GOG does give you a refund if there’s a real technical problem that they can verify, for instance, a compatibility issue with certain display cards. But you are right, they are not going to refund anything just because you don’t like something.